Introduction

This week, our group proceeded to make one of the two recipes listed in our project proposal. We chose to start with this recipe as it was the simplest, and the ingredients were much easier to obtain in grocery stores, compared to the other recipe which we will make next week.

Recipe:

1. 1 package yeast
2. 1/4 cup water
3. 2 cups milk, scalded
4. 2 tbsp. sugar
5. 1 tsp. salt
6. 1 tbs. oil
7. 6 1/4 cups flour, sifted

Instructions followed:

Step 1:

The first step of the recipe consisted of preparing the dry yeast by letting it sit in lukewarm for a period of 10 minutes. While waiting for the yeast to soften, we combined the rest of the ingredient in a pot by warming up 2 cups of milk, then mixing in the sugar, salt, and oil, as well as 1/4 cup of flour to that same pot.

Step 2: After the completion of the first step, we combined the mixture in the pot into the bowl with the softened dry yeast. It was then time to add the remaining amount of flour to the bowl. Soon after we began to stir all the ingredients together, it was clear that this recipe would require a significant amount of kneading to transform the flakey dough into a much smoother one.

Step 3: We kneaded for a few minutes until we were satisfied with the texture of the dough, we placed it into a bowl and allowed the dough to rise to reach double of its initial size. This process took approximately an hour, and once it had doubled, one of us punched the dough, and following this, we let it sit again until it doubled.

Step 4: Once the dough had doubled in size again, we cut the ball in four pieces to make 4 smaller loaves; one for each team member and cut an ‘x’ on top. The recipe required the dough to sit for 10 more minutes before going in the oven.

Step 5: Finally, we placed the loaves on a pan and baked them 400 F for 35 minutes, but could have been taken out around the 30 minute mark.

Final Thoughts: The bread had an overall pleasant texture when eaten warm directly after taking them out of the oven, but it was quite dense compared to breads like modern sourdough. The taste however was extremely bland, since our palates have most likely gotten used to modern breads containing more sugar and other ingredients giving our bread more flavour. In addition, like many other types of European bread, recipes like this one uses very little sugar and fats, which slows bread from going stale too quickly, therefore the bread began to harden significantly as it cooled down. Overall, this recipe is quite similar to some types of bread we would still find nowadays, but it will definitely be interesting to try a recipe with much more complex ingredients and compare it to this one.